Oxygen's Strut is a television show about the first all-transgender modeling agency, which is based in Los Angeles. The show chronicles the models as they negotiate their day-to-day lives and fight to break down barriers as well as take on the responsibility of representing the transgender community.
Oxygen Digital partnered with GLAAD before the show began to better understand the unique obstacles and issues facing transgender people (from being frequent victims of violence to dealing with daily discrimination and/or misperceptions), and to make certain all of our content would be on point, with optimal messaging.
As one of the transgender models of the show explained in an exclusive digital interview before Strut aired, "Visibility is the largest problem for LGBT people in the media. The fact that most people would rather see two men shooting each other with guns rather than two men kissing says a lot about how messed up society is."
Our objective had just been defined: to allow our diverse, national audience to truly get to know the show's transgender cast and to share both the joy and the barriers they experience every day.
To help the LGBTQ community gain visibility and to enlighten audiences who have little exposure to transgender people, we created a rich social and digital media campaign in collaboration with Executive Producer Whoopi Goldberg, cast members, photographers, videographers, and writers who specialize in LGBTQ news and trends.
We hired a Los Angeles-based fashion photographer to trail the cast throughout the production of the show, creating a digital repository of stunning imagery of transgender people that we rolled out on our social channels and website.
We created a series of Facebook Live events in which transgender models from the show answered questions and provided their unique perspectives.
We created an LGBTQ section of Oxygen's Very Real lifestyle and entertainment blog and shared daily breaking news pertinent to audiences on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Topics covered were wide-ranging, including: LGBTQ-related trends and styles; the high murder rate for trans people in 2016, the anti-LGBTQ laws enacted in North Carolina, the disproportionate number of LGBTQ youth who are homeless; and coverage of the Orlando tragedy (including cast members sharing their own feelings).
Also on Oxygen.com, we created a series of exclusive videos, articles and interviews to introduce the cast to both the LGBTQ community as well as those who are straight and cisgender.
Throughout the run of our campaign (8/30/16 – 10/25/16), posts to our Strut Facebook account totalled nearly 21 million impressions with organic engagements reaching 98,000. Also on Strut's Facebook page, native videos were streamed 5,800,000 times and our Facebook Live events generated more than 150,000 views. It was our objective to provide Strut's transgender cast with the visibility they deserve, and we are thrilled to have been able to provide them with a platform.
